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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   33039 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 7, 2025

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Hysteria about futures

In the last few days, interest in S&P and Dow futures have spiked to the highest level in all time. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=Futures,Dow%20futures&hl=en

This seems to be diven by torrent of fake news articles that all suddenly want to talk about futures right now despite basically never mentioning them ever before. Example: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/stock-futures-nikkei-225-s-p-500-nasdaq-dow-tariffs/ https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/02/business/us-stock-market/index.html https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-investors-braced-more-volatility-bumps-ahead-monday-trading-open-2025-04-06/

Now of course the explanation is obvious, they're doing it as a dig on trump. The fake news media was fishing for something to attack trump with, and every fake news journalist in the country just got their orders. And their psy op worked, because now all the normies are talking about it. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&geo=US&q=Futures,Dow%20futures,Crypto,Twitter&hl=en

We've had big market crashes before, but nobody really cared about stock futures. Any other explanation?

  • -16

In the last 100 years? Definitely not. In 1925 bank deposits were uninsured, tariffs were common, and every major country had its own gold standard.

Even after the market didn't 'plummet' and just went sideways monday & tuesday, some basic news aggregators like yahoo news (don't ask, I'm masochistic and want to see what is being pushed to normie boomers) kept that Reuters article about futures from sunday on the front page for days, just because the headline was so juicy for them as anti-trump fuel, and it seemed like it was applicable at any point in time. People have given some reasonable pushback and alternative explanations, but you're also not wrong here.

I forget who said it at the Reddit, but the first-term Trump advice of 'wait a week before forming a strong opinion about anything Trump does or is alleged to have done' remains sound advice. It typically takes a few days to separate the statements from the coverage from the actions, if any, that were being claimed / insinuated.

N=1, but this is actually the first time I’ve seen “futures” mentioned in conjunction with tariffs. My parents, coworkers, etc. just talk about the collective “market” crashing.

I learned about them from a Terry Pratchett joke. Something about a pork futures warehouse.

Anyway, google trends doesn’t tell you anything useful. Interest in tariffs has spiked. So have terms like deficit and onshoring. Are these psyops, too?

No those aren't because those terms have have been mentioned and are in common use before March 2025.

Are we looking at the same graphs? Cause the spike in "tariffs" looks more extreme than any of the ones you showed.

Also, if you extend this one back to the beginning of 2020, rather than April 2020, there's a giant spike in both "futures" terms.

zoom out to all time. an even bigger spike occurred in 2020 during Covid . there is no psyop

If you look carefully it's actually higher right now. The problem is tmin the 5+ year view the current data is truncated, but if you compare to a 12 mo ago baseline right now is higher

This seems to be diven by torrent of fake news articles

Can you clarify what's fake about these news articles?

Their motivation.

Now of course the explanation is obvious

You’re right. The answer is obvious.

they're doing it as a dig on trump.

No, it’s because futures exchanges are open longer hours than stock exchanges. If you want to know what the market thinks of recent news that broke while the stock market was closed, you look at the futures market.

Futures markets are reported literally every day. I have no idea what this post on "psyops" is about.

Um, because it didn't exist? The Dow futures index wasn't launched until 2015. The only big crash since then was the March 2020 crash, and people were definitely talking about the Dow Futures Index then, but with other things taking the spotlight, you probably weren't reading the business section. Now that the tariffs are THE story of the week, you're paying closer attention to what's being written about the markets.

Ok we have a winner here. This explanation sounds right, that futures are a new thing.

Equity index futures are not a new thing. The first S&P 500 index future was traded in 1982.

Financial professionals don't take the Dow particularly seriously as an index, and there were practical advantages to concentrating trading in a single US large-cap index, which is why Dow index futures were not traded until 2015.

I suspect the reason why there used to be less coverage of equity index futures markets in the non-specialist media is the development of the 24hr news cycle - it was only recently that a journalist (or citizen journalist) would need to report on equity markets when the stock exchange was closed.

I would add to this that uninformed order flow retail traders had much less access to derivatives in the past, whereas now, apps like Robinhood make them a breeze to enable and eagerly teach you how to use them.

Futures are therefore more broadly discussed.

I get a sensible chuckle every time I see how the retail trading apps have managed to turn the mandatory risk disclosures into a, “you must be at least this cool to trade options 😎, “ button.

Have you renewed your subscription?

It's important to understand the risks of stock ownership

Yeah, even Mammon is impressed

There it is: a casus belli for ignoring the supreme court. Trump has the perfect narrative: he needs to keep the country safe and the court is letting philosophy and activism stop them seeing it. SCOTUS chose violence by trying to override what is obviously executive branch prerogative. Now all Trump has to do is find his cojones.

There was never a need for a "casus belli", Trump can just do things. He can just ignore the supreme court. What's supposed to keep the country working is not "presidents don't assume dictatorial powers" but "the other organs stop him". This will simply be an opportunity to discover if it works.

Do... do supreme court justices not know that El Salvador is out of their jurisdiction? Or do they think because Trump is within their jurisdiction they can force him to send a Seal team to extricate an illegal, possibly murderous gang member, migrant that will just get deported again anyways? How do they expect to get this man back? Does facilitate just mean Trump calls and asks in a sarcastic voice for him back and Bukele knowing Trump doesn't actually want this says no. Then Trump throws up his hands and we move on? It's bizarre the amount of effort and resources globalists will tie up to keep the whole illegal immigration grift going.

Does facilitate just mean Trump calls and asks in a sarcastic voice for him back and Bukele knowing Trump doesn't actually want this says no.

I think so yes. But i guess this is why scotus is punting, they asked the lower court to clarify, and after that clarification we can have round 2 at scotus.

That's a lot of emotive language in your post.

I don't have an opinion about this guy in particular (although clearly you do) but this is a horrific precedent to try and set, this argument could easily be applied to a citizen. There's nothing about the executive's argument that actually requires him to be an immigrant and the courts could equally "not have jurisdiction" over a citizen on foreign soil.

If there was the executive will to actually get this man back it's plainly obvious a phone call could be made to El Salvador to put this man on a flight back tomorrow. He's only there on the behest of the United States in the first place.

If there was the executive will to actually get this man back it's plainly obvious a phone call could be made to El Salvador to put this man on a flight back tomorrow.

I think you're probably right at some level on the circumstances in this case, but the man is a Salvadoran citizen and international law generally provides a number of protections when one country requests something resembling extradition. If Australia asked the US to return an American who overstayed their visa there and was now imprisoned in the US (for whatever reason), I'm not sure we'd just hand them over either. "Why didn't the Judiciary just compel the Executive to make foreign nations release their own political prisoners?" reads very much as "one weird trick" that you wouldn't expect to work.

international law generally provides a number of protections when one country requests something resembling extradition.

International law comes only into it in so far as it prohibits sending in the marines to fetch him. Prisoner transfers needing the consent of both countries is just a downstream consequence of respecting national sovereignty.

From my understanding, El Salvador has locked him up for being a gang member on the US say-so without a trial. I think that it is safe to assume that they will not be overly concerned with violating his citizen rights by "extraditing" him to the US at his request.

In fact, if the US needed him for a much more unfriendly reason, say to compel him to bear witness against US citizen gang members in a criminal case, I am sure that El Salvador could be persuaded to extradite him without too much trouble.

You are correct that most countries are not willing to either extradite their citizens to the US or send over their political prisoners, but this case is unlike most such cases. Basically, Trump is paying El Salvador to take back (and imprison) suspected gang members to score a political victory. It is safe to assume that on the part of El Salvador, this is purely a business relationship -- they likely don't feel either protective or vengeful towards the man in question, and would be equally happy to get paid for locking some other former US resident up.

First of all, the Court isn't the one issuing the order, it's the district.

Second, there are allegations that the US is paying for the prisoners that is has sent to El Salvador. I don't know if that's a true statement, but if it is, that would imply that ES is holding them on behalf of the US, which further implies that the US has substantial control over the process.

I expect that the name of the game now is ascertaining exactly how much or how little control the US has here.

What did you think the judiciary's role was? I see barely any room between having judges exercising their normal amount of power and what you say means the country is basically doomed. I don't see why this particular individuals case is somehow of primary national importance such that a judge cannot be allowed to interfere. Nor do I understand why this is black pulling or surprising, this seems like a very typical type of thing for a judge to do in the course of business absent any special evidence to the contrary. Do you think this particular judge has done something illegal?

"A country deciding for itself". The trump administration is not The Country, just as the judge is not The Country. You seem so afraid of vesting a minimal amount of power in the judiciary that you are willing to accept much greater authority from a third party.

literally there is NOTHING more important than a country deciding for itself who to let in and who to expel

Citation needed. I mean, I would agree that it is very important, but vast swathes of the Western populace would not.

Vast swathes are wrong. Boundaries are what makes things exist. A country with no borders is not a country, it's an economic zone.

That said, this also works for rule of law. A US without its silly due process traditions would not be the US.

Still. If you can't prevent yourself from being undermined you deserve to fail.

Counterpoint: the US is full of these entities called "states", which are closer to countries in their own right than they are to mere administrative districts.

For a lot of practical matters, state regulations are more relevant than federal regulations. There is a difference between California and Texas. Still, the entity which is a state controls almost nothing about its borders. If five millions of Californians decided to move to Idaho, there is nothing Idaho could do about that. But despite this, states are a thing, and are not rendered irrelevant by their lack of border control.

You are confusing nations and states. The US has no internal states since the civil war (except for native tribe exceptions), it's a unitary federation. Not a confederation. US states are now functionally closer to lander within Germany than states within the EU.

There are some nations inside the US that could be their own independent entity. But that's true of many states.

I don't believe quiet_NaN was trying to claim that US states were fully sovereign, the point they were making is that their control of their internal policy was not made irrelevant by their lack of control over inter-state migration.

I disagree. And I always will so long as Californians can de jure just turn up to Texas and change how it works and vice versa. If you can dissolve the people and elect another, you don't have government, just administration.

A country with no borders is not a country, it's an economic zone.

I don't think you can mix these two metaphors popular on the right. Some economic zones have actual walls around them. Not to mention that the conditions of the economic zone obviously don't apply outside the zone, otherwise everything would be in the zone.

not A implies B does not necessitate that B implies not A

Cool, but the point is that Bs have As, so if something doesn't have an A, it's not a B.

Some Bs have As. Not all of them however, have As. So this does not follow.

Beyond formalities however, what my argument is at core that a government that does not control who it administers ceases to be one properly speaking because it is easily gamed by outside actors. And therefore decays into some administrative or economic denomination of the larger structure that puppets it.

The fact that zones have boundaries in some sense that isn't this one is equivocation that isn't relevant to this particular instantiation of the concept. Except insofar as to show that boundaries that are artificial (in the purely administrative lines on a map sense) do not create this particular sort of meaning immediately. Time does tend to fix that, however. As many wars including some current ones can attest.

SSRs were important and historically significant administrative denominations or economic zones, but they were not states in any proper sense of the word.

Some Bs have As. Not all of them however, have As. So this does not follow.

They do, of course, as you admit yourself. It's merely a "no true Scotsman" of what constitutes a border.

Beyond formalities however, what my argument is at core that a government that does not control who it administers ceases to be one properly speaking because it is easily gamed by outside actors. And therefore decays into some administrative or economic denomination of the larger structure that puppets it.

It's not clear to me why this is true except that you feel strongly about this particular issue. Like if you were a leftist telling me about how governments that don't control inequality cease to be a government "properly speaking" because , I'm not impressed.

The current immigration regime is not unprecedented. There was much more freedom of movement before the latter part of the 20th century than there has been since. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the foreign born share of the population was comparable to what it is today. Was the USA not a government, properly speaking, but merely an economic zone? I don't think so, but if it was, it seems being an economic zone doesn't really mean much for the future trajectory of your country.

For what it's worth, I don't believe that the US has no borders, or didn't have any during the Biden administration.

It had and still has badly enforced ones, which still produce part of the dissolution effect I describe, but not nearly in the total sense that totally open borders do.

It's not clear to me why this is true except that you feel strongly about this particular issue.

People conquered by the Mongols probably found it clear that despite being allowed to maintain their own self government, the ability for the aforementioned Mongols to sack them or collect tribute at will was the dissolution of their statehood.

Perhaps there is some future hypothetical state of humanity where people wandering in and out of your territory is as consequence free as the microbes living it up on top of our skins are to us (and even then those are not in truth consequence free), but since we live in a present where the content of a population has important political consequences as humans always exert political influence of some kind where they live, we have to acknowledge this reality in our political models.

I'm sure that if the US truly had no borders, as the far west once did, and Mexican cartels were allowed to roam free and pillage at will, or some imperilled population could simply install themselves on your neighborhood overnight you'd properly understand your condition as stateless.

In the meantime, I maintain and am not alone in doing so that a proper definition of statehood requires an exclusive territory.

I hear “a country without borders isn’t a country” all the time, but clearly a country with open borders still has borders. The border still delineates where the police and military can operate, it determines jurisdictional issues, etc. States have open borders, but nobody is suggesting there’s no difference between California and Texas.

So if by “no borders” you actually only mean “open borders,” then the claim “a country with no borders is not a country, it’s an economic zone” is plainly false.

Agreed. I would argue that the most important thing about a society are its constraints on applying force. The rules about that are different in a feudal society or the USSR or the contemporary US, and they tell you a lot about what the society is like.

Historically, the bad thing about getting invaded is not that you have a bunch of people speaking in funny accents in the streets, but that the invaders would claim a monopoly on violence to the detriment of whomever previously had such powers.

Some illegals in the US might do a bit of gang violence, but they do not control the US though it. The entity which controls the US (ultimately through violence) is the US government. The next two relevant political entities engaging in violence -- very much also-rans compared to the US government -- would be BLM and J6.

Historically, the bad thing about getting invaded is not that you have a bunch of people speaking in funny accents in the streets, but that the invaders would claim a monopoly on violence to the detriment of whomever previously had such powers.

I would say that the really bad part of being invaded is that you are dispossessed and ruled by people who at best aren’t like you (and therefore inherently make your country less hospitable to you in the course of improving their own quality of life) and at worst despise and actively persecute you.

Bloodshed is very bad, obviously, but if the invaders killed five percent of the population and then settled down to rule it in precisely the manner that the original inhabitants would like best, I don’t think the bad blood would last. Whereas a bloodless coup that made the natives feel like strangers and inferiors in their own country is resented in perpetuity.

What evidence is there that this man is a gang member or has committed any crimes other than entering the country illegally?

A confidential informant who may or may not exist says he's a gang member. Also he wore a Chicago Bulls cap and hoodie, in Maryland.

I think the norms of this community strongly opposed copy-pasting the same response into multiple replies in the thread. Even if it is an apropos, relevant quote.

If a judge prevented an American citizen from being expelled from the US because it was illegal, would that be a good thing or would it be a problem because it undermined the country's ability to decide who to keep and who to expel?

I think you guys are missing the point. US immigration law is messed up, it's an insane struggle to bring a spouse to the US (like a 10 year bureaucratic process of living and waiting in the Czech Republic to be allowed in, or a few years for some spousal visa.) This guy has a US citizen wife, who's not able to keep her family. Yes, the border's weak, many bad apples were let in which spoil the bunch, but this regulatory environment is not helping you and me; it restricts the supply of tradwives!

As a sovereign citizen, I should be able to relocate my harem to Idaho, but Johnny gov don't let me, and you celebrate precedent to arbitrarily remove the spouses we do get in?! To quote Crass:

If you care to take a closer look at the way things really stand, You'd see we're all just niggers to the rulers of this land.

Remember, they are exerting effort to defamily a US citizen, to break the bonds of holy matrimony, instead of prioritizing the millions without such bonds and connections. This is raw anarchotyranny.

Except that we can’t even start that process as long as the default position of the government is “just come in, stay. By the time we actually get around to dealing with the case, you’ll be married to an American, probably have a couple of kids, and therefore we won’t be allowed to deport you anyway because we don’t break up American families.”

I want a sane immigration policy, as I think it’s much to hard and takes to long to come in legally. But at the same time, starting on that process with so many people crashing the border, overstaying visas, coming in as “students” but never enrolling in college, etc. isn’t going to work. We first need control of the border. Then we can create a vetting process that allows us to let good people in people we know are not gang members, drug pushers, terrorists, and people with so few skills that well be paying them welfare benefits forever. A sane system is possible, but trying to build it without dealing with the backlog and making it clear we don’t tolerate people sneaking in or overstaying visas, there’s no way to get there.

Why is this judge's decision not simply part of the process by which "the country" decides who to let in and who to expel? Are the president's desires the sole legitimate expression of the national will? We have a government of laws, not of men, or at least that's how it was intended.

Repeatedly spamming the same comment at multiple points in a thread is obnoxious; please do not do this. Consider this a warning.

To be fair, this platform does not permit a single comment to include responses to multiple comments (as, e. g., Xenforo and 4chan do), and which workarounds for that limitation are best is not immediately obvious. Maybe you should clarify what your preferred workarounds are—e. g., one long response with a bunch of username alerts at the end, or a combination of one long response and a bunch of short responses consisting of links to the long response.

I would like to note that it's not a rule or requirement. The OP was modded for being obnoxious; copy-pasting a tweet is only one part of his offense.

I generally post substantive replies in one spot, ping the other people the comment would also be directed at, and add a "see here" with a link to the big comment in other places.

Aaand we've got another poster deleting their top-level and comments - same person as before?

At this point the first and second top level comments are deleted by author.

No, but there is asymmetry.

Whenever I hear German politicans speak about international relations, there recur phrases like "democratic rule of law". In public discourse in general, democracy and rule of law seem to be considered much the same, or at least inseparately linked. I feel like this is a lumping-together of two very different concepts, and the two are at least as likely to be at odds with each other as they are to be mutually supportive. In my personal estimation: Far more likely to be conflict than otherwise. Western liberal societies have perhaps managed to have both, to some extent, for a while, but it's always been an unstable compromise. As the cracks show more clearly and people learn how to exploit and subvert these systems, I will not be surprised if the US or any other Western country needs to decide between either rule of law or democracy.

I think some people certainly conflate "rule of law(s), which happen to have been established by a democracy" and "rule of law(s), which are by their nature inherently democratic", with the latter paving the way for tyranny. This intersects with disagreements over the definition of democracy, where one side claims it means "following the set of prescribed rules we have established for maintaining a representative government" and the other claims it means "the majority get to dictate policy with absolute unconstrained authority (at least whenever I agree with the majority)".

Agreed, with an important addendum to recognise that the “we” from “ the set of prescribed rules we have established for maintaining a representative government” is often a very specific and not-at-all representative group: the secular army in pre-Erdogan Turkey, or the powers running postwar west-Germany, or (in many ways) Tony Blair in the UK.

I would add that "rule of law" is worth little when the laws do not preserve freedom, which I consider a much more terminal goal than democracy or rule of law.

It just so happens that in large polities, enshrining freedoms in laws is the best way to establish them, and that democracies are less terrible about preserving such laws than the other forms of government that have been tried. This is how we get freedoms, rule of law, democracy as a package deal.

Immigration judges are part of the executive, they aren’t even Art III judges. This is the same branch that deported Garcia, in violation of their own order. And at the time of the order, that Executive was Donald Trump.

It’s not even close to an issue of national sovereignty, it’s just dumbassery. It’s a refusal to be at all serious about the process required to remove this guy.

The crackpot theory would be that the dumbassery is the point - the Trump administration doesn't have the ability to engage in deportations on the scale it desires without spending a bunch of money building a large and invasive immigration enforcement apparatus that will alienate the general public. What it can do is terrorize immigrants with an arbitrary and capricious enforcement regime in which you may be irretrievably sent to a black hole prison, regardless of your notional legal protections. This serves the dual purpose of providing a spectacle for hardcore nativist voters and creating an atmosphere of fear that will encourage immigrants to leave and discourage more from coming.

However, per my flair I think this is probably giving them too much credit and they are simply incompetent and view things like due process as an obstacle design to protect criminals.

However, per my flair I think this is probably giving them too much credit and they are simply incompetent and view things like due process as an obstacle design to protect criminals.

There was a comment with a sentence along the lines, "Trump isn't playing 5D chess; people think that because he's playing checkers, but cheating," and perhaps it should have been nominated as AAQC.

https://www.themotte.org/post/1812/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/314861?context=8#context

Since it was only that one sentence, nominated! Perhaps it'll become the second shortest Quality Contribution, behind "We have Roko's Basilisk at home."

Only third-shortest, if we still count The Old Place. The Roko's Basilisk quip managed to dethrone it but "The far-right statement isn't: "It's okay to be white" , it is you tearing it down." is still a masterclass in pithiness.

I agree that the limiting factor isn't money, it's competence.

Not to blackpill too much, but the country is basically doomed. When judges can override issues of national sovereignty - literally there is NOTHING more important than a country deciding for itself who to let in and who to expel - the illegal immigration issue in the US will never be solved. It's over, there's just no way to solve it. The millions who came in will never leave.

Every time I read something hysterical on this forum I always flip what is being talked about in my head:

Not to blackpill too much, but this country is basically doomed. When cabinet appointees can override issues of human rights violations - literally there is NOTHING more important than a government being forced to respect the rights of its citizens and residents - the social justice issue in the US will never be solved. It's over, there's just no way to solve it. There will always be a subjugated class of people in the US.

Less tongue-in-cheek, it seems like the firebrands on the topic of immigration on the US are pretty much cheering for the suspension of habeus corpus: deport by any means necessary, due process be damned. It's unfortunate that it's gotten to this point. But I also dread the unintended consequences / friendly-fire. I guess at least if you're on the conservative side of the political spectrum you don't have any fears of political persecution under this administration.

I think there’s a separate question, which is a factual one about specific cases.

Man, if only we had a third branch of government, not just the executive and judicial branches.

Are you under the impression that object level considerations matter? We're looking at a power struggle not a high school mock trial. It's zero sum. One side will win and the other will lose. One side has a lot more soldiers. How many divisions has Roberts?

At this stage in this country's political evolution, which rhymes with the end of the Roman Republic, the executive is absolutely justified in crossing the Rubicon, just as Caesar was.

At this stage in this country's political evolution, which rhymes with the end of the Roman Republic, the executive is absolutely justified in crossing the Rubicon, just as Caesar was.

He was not, and the executive will not be if they do.

Forget object level considerations. There are only narratives. There are no moral facts. No timeless principles except the laws of mathematics and natural selection. Whatever is, is right.

If the right seizes power, it will have factual raw material sufficient to build a "power narrative" sustaining its rule, just like every power structure has. It's impossible to say whether Trump "is" justified: there's no objective righteousness evaluation function. What matters is that if he tries something and wins, he's able to post hoc rationalize it in a way that allows the losing side (or enough of them) to internalize the change and operate within the new power structure.

Google after all did change Google Maps to read "Gulf of America".

Still says "Gulf of Mexico" from non-US IPs. Still called the "Gulf of Mexico" by everyone who isn't trying to pass a retarded loyalty test. I don't think the workers of the world were united in Havel's Czechoslovakia either, regardless of what the greengrocer said.

You might be content to choose nihilistic "might makes right" philosophy, but I'm not. There is a moral order, and actions can be wrong even if they succeed. If Trump finds cojones, as you put it in another comment, and defies the supreme court, it will not be a righteous act of a brave man standing up to villains. It will be a naked power grab by a man who doesn't like that he can't just get his way. It will, in short, completely vindicate all the people who have claimed that Trump is an existential threat to democracy. I am not going to embrace such a path. But you do you.

There is a moral order

Is there? I find myself unpersuaded by assertions of morality divorced from their effectiveness in achieving real world aims. Moral statements are nothing but polite fictions for aiding collective action. If this collective action amounts to escalating protection and promotion of falsehood, of what use is the polite fiction? Democracy is "good" because it's worked (better and for longer than it has had any right to work) for solving collective action problems. Now that it's stopped working, is it still good?

More comments

Are you under the impression that object level considerations matter?

Yes. Is this supposed to be a trick question?

We're looking at a power struggle not a high school mock trial. It's zero sum. One side will win and the other will lose.

I predict that neither the judicial nor the executive branches are going to be sufficiently defanged that the other no longer needs to compromise with them after this conflict.

One side has a lot more soldiers. How many divisions has Roberts?

I don't anticipate that soldiers will play a significant role in the conflict over the TDA deportations. Do you?

Legislature to the white courtesy phone, Legislature to the white courtesy phone please.

What would be the point of legislation? To make unauthorized economic migration double-secret illegal?

There's a lot to be clarified!

  • To clarify the process and rights of those claiming asylum.

  • To clarify the appropriate standard and process for those claiming protection from removal under 241(b)(3) as Garcia did.

Heck, they could just repeal 241(b)(3) which restricts the authority of the government to remove aliens to certain countries. Or they could strengthen it.

What does the phrase "Manipulation of procedural outcomes" mean to you?

It implies that no one is exercising supervisory authority over the process and procedures to ensure they are aligned to a goal.

In the particular case of US immigration policy, that supervisory authority would be Congress .

To "break the tie" by making whatever it was we were going to do anyway legal or illegal.

We're well on the well-trod path of democracies experiencing escalating norm violations that spiral into physical violence and the breakdown of traditional understanding of power divisions within the government. No country can operate solely according to a written constitution. Functional government always requires tacit understanding of proper rules and order of subordination. When a figure within the government tries to exercise merely textual or positional authority in violation of these tacit agreements, then (even if he's in the right by the rest of the law) the result is strife, unpredictability, and retaliation. Norms break down. The Overton window widens. Eventually, it widens to include physical violence, which starts with street thuggery and ends with proscriptions.

We are on Mr. Gracchus 's wild ride and there is no way off. The only thing that matters now is which faction wins. The norms are broken and can't be fixed. Sulla couldn't restore the norms and we can't either. There's no point getting nostalgic about them. The only goal now is to win.

proscriptions

What exactly did you mean by that? Banning political parties?

we can’t either

Why not? Obviously the norms keep arising in the first place.

I think he means proscription in the sense of “here is a list of people that all TRVE ROMANS have a civic duty to kill on sight”

Yep. And each time power changes hands, even more norms will become irrelevant. The process will escalate until there's one final undeniable rupture of the old system and a new one emerges.

So why risk the other side winning? Why wait? The rupture is inevitable. We're inside the event horizon of political chaos. The only thing accomplished by adhering to the remaining rules is risking ultimate and permanent defeat. Better to act decisively, now, and win.

Even if the downward spiral from Democracy to Caesarism is unstoppable, if you act too soon or too rashly (e.g. if Caesar took the crown from Antony and declared himself Rex, the Gracchi brothers holding on to the tribunate at all costs, etc.) you run the risk of the masses and the old elite uniting to tear you down. As such, if you want to seize power you must still occasionally demonstrate obsequious adherence to the rules while working to keep the bulk of the population on your side as you slowly push the Overton window in your preferred direction (for the record, I think Caesarism is bad and this would not be a good outcome).

Also, if you are using the fall of the Roman Republic as an example, the impact of the so-called Marian reforms (I am not qualified to engage in the ancient history nerds' argument about how much Marius is actually to blame) is fundamental, and has no US equivalent. The Roman Republic became vulnerable to military coups (of which Marius' re-election as consul was the first de facto and Sulla's was the first de jure, and which continued even under the Emperors) because the citizens' army (with military service linked to voting rights in the centuriate assembly) was replaced with a long-service professional army drawn from the proles, with legions which were in practice personally loyal to their generals.

The US armed forces swear their oaths to the Constitution. While there is considerable debate about whether the Constitution is living or dead, we all agree that even if alive it lacks the necessary skills to command troops. So if the downward spiral continues much further the question becomes "Who do the troops actually take orders from?" To pick a topical example, Col Meyers thinking she could get away with her insubordinate display in Greenland suggests that there is a broad consensus among the officer corps that an order by President Trump to launch a surprise attack on an ally would not be obeyed.

FWIW, it remains an unsolved question to what extent the President can bypass the Congressional power to declare war by simply ordering a surprise attack.

Congress has notionally stuck by the War Powers Act, no President of either party has conceded its constitutionality. The courts would punt this as a political question.

So I really don't know -- officers swear an oath that puts them in an impossible place. Certainly the practice of the country for 50-60 years has been that the President can launch some amount of limited military action without Congress, but not larger actions.

FWIW, it remains an unsolved question to what extent the President can bypass the Congressional power to declare war by simply ordering a surprise attack.

Should be may. Regardless of what the Constitution says or means, the President can do that if and only if the armed forces will reliably obey the order, which was what I was thinking about.

If the political feelings of the officer corps were such that the armed forces would reliably obey an order to launch a surprise invasion of Greenland, I suspect Meyers would not have done what she did.

More comments

The Texas border standoffs were another example on the other side of the aisle. Quite literally, the Texan troops who took control of the border were technically US soldiers and the border patrol was not supposed to let them just do that.

This is a common problem in many countries. Sometimes I think people living in failed states and dictatorships and banana republics have a better idea of how political power works than citizens of stable first world countries. People in first world countries tend to the think of the law and the constitution like the laws of physics, or a magic spell. You just say it and if it’s constitutional and legal it magically happens. People living in the more rickety countries are painfully aware that laws and political orders are something that various people have to actually carry out, and they aren’t always going to.

The most fundamental authority of a sovereign entity is determining who is permitted within its borders. The US government has, fundamentally, unconditional authority to expel a foreigner.

There's this argument I once came across in a book on Christian apologetics. The book isn't interesting enough to name, but I remember one argument it made. The book largely endorsed the standard view of cosmology while attempting to complement its position with various applications of the teleological argument. One was based on Earth's magnetic field. The argument goes, the field has a measurable rate of decay, so if we look back, at some point in natural history we would find a period when the field would be as strong as that of a neutron star.

I see this, the "neutron star fallacy" everywhere. Racism, sexism, religious bigotry. If we were so racist, so sexist, so bigoted, if we were so tyrannical for so many, then how were we ever liberated? And yet I know slopes are slippery. It's our world, when "indulgent" behaviors of any variety are made easier, we slide right into them, and we keep sliding. When the federal bureaucracy had its small departments with narrow scopes, soon enough they became massive departments with broad scopes. But there was a point when we could deport foreigners with minimal hurdle, and now we can't.

The power hasn't been reduced, it's been redistributed. The judge exercises greater authority than the President, and where the judge is seen as a check, who checks the judge? A structure by all impressions designed to eliminate such methods of account, for the requirements of censure and removal. It is the system turning a tyranny upon itself, because the judge involved here didn't order the deported's return because they care so much about the law, they ordered it because they hate so much the man behind the deportations.

"It's a slippery slope to mass deportations of undesirable citizens." That never happened here. "They're due habeus corpus" no, not for expulsion.

Slopes are slippery, yeah, but if you're like me (up until this moment) you might visualize the slope as starting at the left and falling to the right. I feel the last century can be neatly explained by visualizing it as starting at the right and falling to the left.

The power hasn't been reduced, it's been redistributed. The judge exercises greater authority than the President, and where the judge is seen as a check, who checks the judge? A structure by all impressions designed to eliminate such methods of account, for the requirements of censure and removal. It is the system turning a tyranny upon itself, because the judge involved here didn't order the deported's return because they care so much about the law, they ordered it because they hate so much the man behind the deportations.

How do you know the judge's motivations? And isn't this begging the question of how the Executive being check-free would be better? Do you also dislike checks and balances, when you disagree with Executive policy?

"It's a slippery slope to mass deportations of undesirable citizens." That never happened here. "They're due habeus corpus" no, not for expulsion.

The WH Press Secretary says they're looking into the legality of deporting undesirable citizens. Have a legal citation for expulsion being an exception to habeas corpus?

The nicer interpretation is they hate Trump. The thoroughly evidence interpretation is they hate the US and are actively working to destroy it.

I've had a problem with the operations of the judicial branch since well before Trump. I oppose any judge below SCOTUS issuing any federal injunction for any reason. The essential structure of the sovereign United States is Executive, Congress, SCOTUS. Executive appointments have no authority to check SCOTUS, it follows circuit courts have no authority to check POTUS.

The WH Press Secretary says they're looking into the legality of deporting undesirable citizens. Have a legal citation for expulsion being an exception to habeas corpus?

Sovereigns owe foreigners no rights. A foreigner has no claim to habeas corpus, let alone any appeal for their deportation, as sovereigns may unconditionally expel foreigners. Citizens are owed due process, which is fulfilled in trial and verdict. I agree that a state should not be able to remove citizens who are otherwise-non-criminally-undesirable, but the conflation of deporting foreigners or banishing violent criminals with latter tyranny is historically baseless and at best maudlin idealism and at worst fearmongering weaponized in service of preserving the tremendous numbers of illegal aliens in this country.

The UK practiced transportation for centuries, now they won't deport serial rapists.

Sovereigns owe foreigners no rights. A foreigner has no claim to habeas corpus, let alone any appeal for their deportation, as sovereigns may unconditionally expel foreigners.

If a foreigner has no claim to habeas corpus, how should claims of citizenship by individuals/non-citizenship by the state be adjudicated?

Ideally:

  1. SCOTUS rules states have no authority to issue identifying documents to illegal aliens except those that expressly mark them as here illegally
  2. Pursuant to this ruling, IDs from the following would be considered null and void and ordered reissued in adherence to the ruling: Washington DC, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington
  3. After period of reissuance (perhaps 3 years, certainly no longer than 5), suspects confronted by ICE must produce documents proving legal residence
  4. Failure to provide at stop results in temporary detention
  5. Failure to provide after a period of time not to exceed 1 week results in summary deportation

Alternatively:

  1. Suspects stopped by ICE are given opportunity to produce valid ID
  2. Those who produce valid IDs from states that do not issue ID to illegals are free to go
  3. Those who produce no IDs, or valid IDs from states that issue identification to illegals, are detained
  4. Those who produce no IDs are given a period not to exceed 1 week to produce documentation; those who produce IDs from compromised states are given a period not to exceed 1 month to produce further documentation (birth certificate, US passport)
  5. Upon failure, summary deportation

In practice, any individual who fails to produce such documentation is a foreigner and present illegally (note: foreigners are legally required to carry ID). As foreigners may be expelled unconditionally, the court has no jurisdiction over the sovereign exercise of the right of deportation, and so foreigners have no legitimate claim to habeas corpus specifically in the matter of their deportation. That "precedent" says they do, and that we do in practice afford them habeas corpus, does not make it legitimate. The sovereign right of deportation is a first principle authority, it cannot be legitimately reduced or abrogated. That is, a state may, without qualification, always and in all cases legitimately remove foreigners from its borders.

As foreigners may be expelled unconditionally, the court has no jurisdiction over the sovereign exercise of the right of deportation, and so foreigners have no legitimate claim to habeas corpus specifically in the matter of their deportation.

Do you have a citation for this? I want to be make sure I understand which of your statements are factual and which are policy preferences.

Can this crime be punished without trial?

(e) Personal possession of registration or receipt card; penalties

Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d). Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.

In your "ideal" adjudication, what prevents ICE from deporting citizens in bad faith and/or due to its demonstrated incompetence? (Even if you think the risk is low, the hazard must be addressed.)

That "precedent" says they do [have habeas corpus], and that we do in practice afford them habeas corpus, does not make it legitimate.

Which precedent and why should we question its legitimacy?

The citation is pure reason.

Definitions:

  1. (A) Supreme control of territory
  2. (B) Sovereign/sovereignty
  3. (C) Ability to enforce borders
  4. (D) Define/maintain geographic boundaries
  5. (E) Determine who may pass boundaries
  6. (F) Establishes/enforces laws
  7. (G) Border control authority as a priori
  8. (H) Unconditional expulsion authority
  9. (I) Conditions exist on deportations
  10. (J) Control limited
  11. (K) Limited body

Premises:

  1. A body that possesses supreme control of territory is sovereign: (A) → (B)
  2. Supreme control of territory requires the ability to enforce borders: (A) → (C)
  3. The enforcement of borders includes the definition and maintenance of geographic boundaries and determining who is allowed to pass those geographic boundaries: (C) → (D) ∧ (E)
  4. The establishing and enforcement of law requires sovereignty: (F) → (B)
  5. Supreme control of territory and the authority to enforce borders grants a priori authority to border control over all other laws: (A) ∧ (C) → (G)
  6. A priori border control includes unconditional expulsion of foreigners: (G) → (H)
  7. Conditions on deportations are limits on control of territory: (I) → (J)
  8. Limited bodies are not sovereign: (K) → ¬(B)

Conclusion:

A sovereign's supreme control of territory grants a priori authority for the unconditional expulsion of foreigners:

(A) ∧ (B) ∧ (C) ∧ (D) ∧ (E) ∧ (G) ∧ (H)

In your "ideal" adjudication, what prevents ICE from deporting citizens in bad faith and/or due to its demonstrated incompetence? (Even if you think the risk is low, the hazard must be addressed.)

I disagree. The leftist establishment uses such fringe cases to demand individual full trials for every deportation while they work ardently to increase the number of illegal aliens in this country. As with those states' issuance of IDs to illegals, the point is not the sanctity of the law or interest in a better-functioning state. The interest is in making it impossible to remove the tens of millions of illegal aliens in this country.

In practice those who cannot provide documentation are here illegally. The remaining edge cases of even several hundred homeless or otherwise profoundly socially detached citizens accidentally deported by ICE do not justify the requirement of millions of trials. But that's another excellent example, as if the homeless were institutionalized as they ought to be, there would be no concern, and then it would be well and truly an extreme minority of citizens who could not prove their citizenship. Regardless, it is not in the interest of a functional state to delay (and, given the above, ultimately fail) at the needed millions of deportations because once in a blue moon a homeless person or Kaczynski-ite is accidentally included. And of course, this would never have been a problem if politicians and billionaires didn't open the doors to millions of illegals in service of gaining future voters and cheap labor. They're causing the problem, they don't get a say in its solution.

Which precedent and why should we question its legitimacy?

See top. Border control is a priori to courts, habeas corpus requires court jurisdiction, courts have no jurisdiction in matters of border control. Again, they literally do, but from fundamental theory of sovereignty, they do not, and thus all actions taken by courts to limit the sovereign exercise of border control are inherently illegitimate.

The most fundamental authority of a sovereign entity is determining who is permitted within its borders.

I don't necessarily disagree with this. I was literally just mocking ("tongue-in-cheek") the hyperbole of the OP that was brought forth without much forethought: reactionary doomposting.

When the federal bureaucracy had its small departments with narrow scopes, soon enough they became massive departments with broad scopes.

The world has changed significantly. People used to show up on our shores with nothing more than a name on a ship manifest. Now passports with electronic components are ubiquitous and traveling without one is unimaginable. Bureaucracy must exist to manage this, no? Or do we simply turn away all foreigners based on a "vibe check" from the current executive? Bureaucracy shouldn't be judged by its size, but by its outcomes (I'll touch on that later in this comment).

Racism, sexism, religious bigotry. If we were so racist, so sexist, so bigoted, if we were so tyrannical for so many, then how were we ever liberated?

This feels like a non-sequitur so I'm just going to ignore it after quoting it...

But there was a point when we could deport foreigners with minimal hurdle, and now we can't.

What days are you hearkening back to? I struggle to think of any notable mass deportations in the modern era. Japanese Internment Camps with FDR? Trail of Tears with Andrew Jackson? Or even further, when you were simply accepted into or rejected from based on skin tone and accent?

who checks the judge?

The legislature, which originally ceded its power for short-term political gains (thanks Newt Gingrich), but has now ceded its power for reactionary political revolution (thanks Mike Johnson).

I'm not defending the current asylum system, as the impression that it can be abused has brought us to a less-than-optimal political "middle-ground" where a few hundred judges are assigned to hundreds of thousands of cases to determine whether someone's asylum claim is authentic or not. Conservatives are on record opposing legislative immigration reform for more than a decade. Progressives do not have political power at the federal level, even if you can find soundbytes on YouTube of them getting "owned". The neoliberal Democrat centrists have never been opposed to immigration reform, and have brought forth multiple bills delivering exactly what their conservative counterparts have asked for (thanks again Newt Gingrich, who needs bipartisan legislation when we can just swing a massive pendulum between 2 shitty alternatives every couple of years).

To go even further: I do think there are going to be really difficult pills to swallow in the coming decades regarding mass migration, not even outside of borders, but within our borders as well. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there is some potential future where we will be watching masses of people starve through binoculars across the Rio Grande. It'd be great to figure out how we can, as a nation, navigate those turbulent waters without regressing to animalistic authoritarianism, but over the past 10 years I have lost faith more and more that that's even possible.

All of this is just a play for more executive power. I don't trust that executive power won't be abused, especially given that the current executive seems to get off (sexually?) on flaunting abuses of power. But maybe there's where you and I differ in concerns about real dangers to our freedom in the coming years.

Good comment.

I invoke my "neutron star fallacy" at your reframing of the top-level comment. It's not a human rights abuse to send foreigners back to their home countries, even if they may face punishment or death. The argument goes that such "abuses" will inevitably snowball into greater tyranny but we know this never happened. It is directly analogous to the identitarian concerns I name.

What days are you hearkening back to? I struggle to think of any notable mass deportations in the modern era.

Operation Wetback.

The legislature

Voted removals aren't checks. A judge overrules the executive or congress, congress can vote to remove, while it takes another judge to overrule the first. The judicial checks itself. At a minimum it should be that if a judge is overruled by a superior court X instances in period of time Y, they are automatically and immediately removed from office. This maintains protection from a nearly-even congress politicizing removals (and the reciprocal gaming that would invite in a change of control) while making their accountability structural. But this also is not a check. We can remove judges ,stuff courts, the power remains, what do we do? Limit it as much as possible. The judicial effectually has authority that supersedes all others, so its authority must be the most strictly regulated, starting with all judges below SCOTUS losing the power to issue injunctions on government activity.

To go even further: I do think there are going to be really difficult pills to swallow in the coming decades regarding mass migration, not even outside of borders, but within our borders as well. I don't think it's unreasonable to think that there is some potential future where we will be watching masses of people starve through binoculars across the Rio Grande. It'd be great to figure out how we can, as a nation, navigate those turbulent waters without regressing to animalistic authoritarianism, but over the past 10 years I have lost faith more and more that that's even possible.

All of this is just a play for more executive power. I don't trust that executive power won't be abused, especially given that the current executive seems to get off (sexually?) on flaunting abuses of power. But maybe there's where you and I differ in concerns about real dangers to our freedom in the coming years.

From 1900, every single bloodthirsty non-socialist non-communist nationalist movement emerged as a response to no less than equally bloodthirsty socialist and communist movements. No milquetoast conservative government sat by only to be taken over by reactionaries. So while I am also concerned about what horrors may lie in our future, I know they will only rise as the last reaction. My beliefs align with preventing that from happening by bringing about the people's current, eminently moderate requests. The district judge ordering the executive to bring back an illegal alien does not reduce the possibility of tyranny, it sharply raises it. Because again, the judicial branch checks itself, but these judges invite a check on power from a much different, far older structure.

Operation Wetback

Thanks for the link and jogging my memory, because I am loosely familiar with this and very familiar with Harlon Carter (amazing how history rhymes so much: parallels to be drawn between modern figures and historical figures).

My takeaway from (admittedly, briefly) reading about this operation is that the "success" wasn't strictly that the executive was able to act with impunity absent judicial oversight, but also that the Mexican government was equally enthusiastic about stemming the tide of migrants.

I still hold the position that the legislature is where the solutions to immigration should lie, and that any interaction between the executive and judicial is fundamentally suspect. I appreciate your comment, but I'm not certain that I can be convinced otherwise.

The most fundamental authority of a sovereign entity is determining who is permitted within its borders. The US government has, fundamentally, unconditional authority to expel a foreigner.

  1. The US government is sovereign and has fundamental authority over matters of immigration and removal
  2. The US government is constituted by the US Constitution, which grants Congress authority over immigration explicitly.
  3. Congress passed 8 USC 1231 241(b)(3) forbidding removal in certain cases, and providing for the AG to set up the process for so adjudicating
  4. The AG does, this process then finds this guy not removable

This is an an exercise of US sovereignty and its authority, as manifest by the above.

The craziest thing is that not a single person upset about this has proposed that Congress just repeal or limit 241(b)(3) and say that everyone that got withholding of removal under it expires in 3 months.

NOTHING more important than a government being forced to respect the rights of its citizens and residents

“Residents” you could have stopped at citizens but then I suppose your whole argument falls apart then doesn’t it?

I’m sorry but this asylum farce is just that. Almost none of the applicants for asylum face any real danger to themselves back home. All of them travelled to through safe countries to get here. What due process is owed to a liar seeking to exploit our goodwill?

The rights of "Residents" versus those of "Citizens" is kind of the whole debate.

More like “illegal residents” and fake asylum claimants. Let’s use accurate language here, as it helps to shed light on what’s truly at stake

How does one define a "fake asylum claimant"? Looks to me like anyone claiming asylum is, by definition, a real asylum claimant. Whether the US chooses to grant them the asylum they claim, and what criteria it bases its decision on, is its own business.

Asylum is when someone fears they be killed if they return home.

It’s pretty simple to tell. Oh we have X number of people saying they will die from this country. How many people are actually dying in that country? How many safe countries did they walk through to get here?

Simple, but proceduralism is a weapon of the left, so in practice what happens is none of this basic common sense gets applied, as can be seen in the courts decision

Sure. I was just making the admittedly slightly pedantic point that the phrase "fake asylum claimant" is misleading and I hate it and it needs to die. Anyone claiming asylum is - by definition - a real asylum claimant, whether or not they actually deserve to have their claim recognized. They might very well be a spurious asylum claimant, but a spurious asylum claimant is still a real asylum claimant, in the same way that in a spurious lawsuit, a spurious plaintiff is still a plaintiff.

A "fake asylum claimant" properly defined would be someone who, say, faked paperwork about having recognized asylum-seeker status without actually submitting a request to the government. That kind of fraud might exist, for all I know. But it's not the same thing.

(Does this matter? I think so. A fake asylum claimant, in the proper sense of the phrase, would be willfully committing fraud. In contrast, many an asylum-seeker whose request should be turned down might, nonetheless, be acting in good faith; we can tell them no without lumping them in with the actual criminals. A toy example would be a guy suffering from pathological paranoia, who sincerely but irrationally thinks there are people after him. A serious example would be the scores of claimants who correctly believed their case met the criteria which have applied in recent years. It's not their fault our recent standards have been bullshit, and even if we start turning them away now, we shouldn't treat them like fraudsters.)

Is it? Had the government accidentally deported a US citizen to an El Salvadorsn prison I don't see why they can't make the same exact argument: the courts cannot dictate to the executive how to retrieve them, it's completely up to the executive to do it or just kind of half heartedly try or just blow the whole thing off because they're too busy.

This is a pretty disturbing precedent to set if it stands.

I'd question the precedent the other way too, for the courts to dictate specific international relations outcomes seems a pretty slippery slope as well. If the court orders "return them by any means necessary" then I suppose we're all in for judicially-mandated ground invasions. If only Cheney had been aware of this One Weird Trick.

Agreed, that would also be a bad precedent.

So where do we stand? If the POTUS disappears even a US citizen to a foreign prison we just have to trust their best effort, which may be no actual effort, to bring them back? Any consequences for the POTUS here would be judicial overreach?

The US has accidentally deported citizens before. Apparently, they've been so embarrassed they tried hard to fix it on their own, with no court order needed. That's just because the executives have thought this an important norm to uphold?

To be a bit glib, we could establish a third branch of the federal government with a nebulously-defined capability to charge the other two branches (and their agents) and remove them from power as necessary when a sufficiently-large group of geographically-distributed representatives find their actions to be sufficiently out-of-line with the general consent of the governed.

As to how you'd get Congress to stop napping and actually become accountable for things again, that seems much harder. You'd think "do a bunch of questionable stuff to draw their ire" might work, but I've seen quite a bit of questionable stuff in my lifetime, and it hasn't yet.

The Supreme Court orders "wrongly" deported man to be returned to the US

That's a gross exaggeration of the order's actual text.

(1) The district judge ordered the government to "facilitate and effectuate" the alien's return by the end of April 7. The government appealed.

(2) Chief Justice Roberts issued an administrative stay so that the Supreme Court could consider the appeal.

(3) The April 7 deadline expired and became moot. The Supreme Court refused to reverse the rest of the order, but instead merely vacated and remanded so that the district jude could clarify what "effectuate" means, since it "may exceed the District Court's authority" (by forcing the US government to negotiate with the El Salvador government).

The April 7 deadline expired and became moot. The Supreme Court refused to reverse the rest of the order, but instead merely vacated and remanded so that the district jude could clarify what "effectuate" means, since it "may exceed the District Court's authority" (by forcing the US government to negotiate with the El Salvador government).

What prevents the WH from endlessly appealing in bad faith, alternating between claiming the District Court is either being unclear about the meaning of "effectuate" or being prescriptive in such a way that violates the separation of powers? Something along the lines of "Stop paying El Salvador to imprison him; claim him as the USA's ward, upon release from prison; and put him on the next flight to the USA, once he's in custody" should be a reasonable process to follow, but the Trump administration isn't especially reasonable.

Same thing that keeps the District Court from actually being unclear about the meaning of "effectuate" or being prescriptive in such a way that violates separation of powers: the limits of John Roberts's patience. Either the Supreme Court eventually affirms an order for Trump to do something (at which point Trump can either obey or cause an acute constitutional crisis), or it eventually says enough has been done and dismisses the case, or it keeps the case going until 2028.

If the Chief Justice were someone other than John Roberts, who is very sensitive to the incentives to punt thorny questions, their patience might be a limiting factor. Given Roberts's history of punting thorny questions, how is this a limitation?

Then the case keeps going until 2028 if both Trump and the District Court remain intransigent.

And if only the WH is intransigent?

They win.

Cheating is apparently a good checkers strategy.

Read literally, the original order requires the government to send in SEAL Team 6 to perform an extraction operation at CECOT in the event the Salvadorian government doesn’t hand him over in time.

I suppose a court could order the government to request Abrego Garcia back and to stop paying El Salvador to detain him, but beyond that I’m not really sure what they can do.

Thank you for this summary; the clarity is extremely helpful.

I am usually not a fan of mootness games, or of Roberts' dodging underlying issues, and I have mixed feelings about this one too. But I have to admire his cleverness at avoiding constitutional crises.

Roberts is rather pragmatic, and I'm somewhat inclined to believe that at least part of the motivation here is that the judiciary shouldn't be issuing orders that won't actually be followed. Better to issue a stay then find that his orders won't (or can't, given international relations) be followed, and fight a better battle some other day.

When judges can override issues of national sovereignty

In the United States, national sovereignty is vested in three co-equal branches (plus, to the extent it still kinda counts as "national", fifty separately sovereign states).

literally there is NOTHING more important than a country deciding for itself who to let in and who to expel

You are correct that this is a very important thing for a country to decide. That makes it a teeny bit weird to get super upset about this case, in particular, since it appears that the government has claimed that this wasn't really a "decision" and was just an "error". Like, sure, someone could get a little bit into the details of the legal arguments, but on your own terms, it seems wayyyy less important than you're making it out to be.

Right the only intentional decision here was the one putting off his expulsion.

I happen to think that decision is wrong, and he should’ve been deported there anyway, but that doesn’t really change what happened at all.

three co-equal branches

This business about the three branches being "co-equal" has always rubbed me the wrong way. It doesn't appear in the constitution. Congress has the power to set the president's salary and to fire him. But not vice-versa. It sure sounds like Congress is the boss. To boot, Congress is set up first in the constitution, in Article 1, whereas the president second in Article 2.

Sure, "co-equal" is definitely not often defined extremely precisely. They're obviously not, like, mathematically "equal" or "identical" or anything. They don't have exactly equal tools or powers. They might even have different numbers on their Articles. But they all get Articles. They're all equally established by the Constitution. They all derive a sense of legitimacy as institutions from that establishment by an adopted Constitutional text. They all exercise powers and authorities given to them directly from the primary document, not some lesser establishment or delegation. No branch can simply eliminate another wholesale.1 (Though they obviously each have tools that can greatly impact the operations of the others.) And moving back a bit toward the discussion at hand, I think there is little sense in saying that national sovereignty is located purely within a strict subset of branches. They all have some component or part to play in the exercise of national sovereignty that no other bodies or institutions apart from them have.

1 - Congress comes the closest here, but even they must appeal to the judgment of the fifty separately sovereign states.

Curiously, Congress refuses to do fuck-all about any of this.

As many (here and everywhere) have pointed out, this is one key root of our political dysfunction. There is a body that can definitively solve matters by passing an unambiguous law but simply doesn't, leaving us to fight over the exactly implications of a 70-year old vague statute.

Judges should always be have the authority to override the government in favor of individual freedoms. A few gang members being on the loose is nothing compared to the threat of a tyrannical government. Far from a blackpill, rulings like this give me some hope that checks and balances will actually work in practice.

So your only issue with what Trump did is that he didn't pack the court yet?

He didn’t have to, he was just so incredibly dumb that he hired three judges solely based on their views on abortion instead of any other conservative principle. By Trump’s standards, Pope Francis would be a conservative SCOTUS judge because he’s anti-abortion.

Gorsuch and to a lesser degree BK have both been generally strong against the admin state. Most conservatives, Bostock aside, have been pleased with both. ACB on the other hand…

Far from a blackpill, rulings like this give me some hope that checks and balances will actually work in practice.

It depends on your definition of checks and balances. The question here is who is checking and balancing court decisions. Somebody can say that it can be executive by ignoring them. It is also not without a precedent such as when Andrew Jackson simply ignored court decision of Worcester v. Georgia (1832) stating that executive branch also has ability to interpret the constitution. Another example was Lincoln ignoring ruling regarding suspension of habeas corpus

If ICE detention facilities are full, then via the pigeonhole principle any foreigners being required to enter the country increases the number of people on the loose.

There is quite a difference from refusing to admit an alien (which is solely the discretion of the executive, without any judicial review whatsoever -- see Knauff v. Shaughnessy) and deporting an individual already residing in the US to a place that same executive had determined he could not be deported to.

I'm not that optimistic. It reminds me of The Simpsons:

The judges are empowered to help criminals. You thought judges were empowered to help? Empowered to help criminals, not you.

It'll take a good action to move my opinion in a good direction. Not just "they can do something; good things are 'something', therefore they can do good things."

The current SCOTUS were the ones who torched Roe v Wade and gave Trump immunity for J6, so they are not exactly all bleeding heart wokes.

I think this is a matter of rule of law, primarily. The gist of the case was there was a court order against deporting him, and ICE ignored that court order through incompetence or malice. Then they were like, "oops, honest mistake, but now it is out of our hands, and he was never allowed to be here in the first place, and now he is not, so everything is good, right".

If you let Trump's goons get away with ignoring due process, they will ignore more of it. So instead, you set a warning example: if you disobey the courts, we will make you undo everything you did, even if you claim it is disproportionate.

Not waiting for someone to their day in court is own thing. Contravening a court order is quite another.

But why stop there? After all, there are also tons of gang members with US passports. But can you really be a US citizen and a member of a gang at the same time?

Criminal trials are long, have high standards of evidence and often end in acquittals due to a lack of compelling evidence or because of "police misconduct". In fact, you have to show the criminals the evidence against them, have the snitch take the stand or disclose that you had tapped their phones or whatever. Naturally, criminal organizations learn from this crazy practice, and prosecuting them within the law becomes even harder.

Would it not be much easier if we could just round up all the bad persons and ship them to some megaprison in El Salvador, without all of this "but I am a US citizen" or all that due process imposed by the woke legal system? And once we have taken care of the gang members (or "alleged gang members", as the woke lawyers would call them), we can take care of other undesirables. The domestic terrorists burning Teslas. The people cheering for them on social media. Et cetera.

Trying to reverse outcomes through exceptionalism (“these cases are too urgent for due process”) invites mission creep fast. If you jettison due process for gangbangers, it won’t take long before that logic gets used on political enemies more broadly. The left has shown that too.

You can argue that the current “law” is functionally illegitimate—but that doesn’t mean lawlessness restores legitimacy. It usually just accelerates collapse. Procedural justice that enshrines substantive injustice will eventually be seen as a mask, not a shield. But burning the mask doesn’t make you noble, it just means you’re no longer pretending.

I’m not opposed to some sort of internal process. What im concerned about is those motivated to prevent deportations weaponizing tge process to basically grind tge whole thing to a stop by lawfare. I’ve said this a million times, but a good lawyer can absolutely abuse procedure to make what should be a hour long case into a month long slog through endless motions, frivolous witnesses, long discovery processes, and so on. Th3 end result is grinding everything to a halt as we now spend 6 months per detainee trying to defeat the lawfare. And of course this leads to over crowding which forces us back to “catch and release” and people staying for decades because the system is ground to a halt.

Procedural justice that enshrines substantive injustice will eventually be seen as a mask

You describe the system that allowed Garcia to stay here in the first place. He had no right to be here, yet he was here. All of the procedural justice applies to keeping people with no rights to be here in the country. None of the procedural justice applies when they break in. We have a system where anyone can waltz on in, and it takes a herculean effort to remove them.

I don’t think this is accurate. He couldn’t be removed to El Salvador. If the government returns him to the US embassy in El Salvador and then deports him to another country that would be kosher.

Maybe they will. I don't think the SCOTUS decision prevents them from doing that.

Without endorsing the idea, I have to wonder if the US is calling up Rwanda to see if they could get an agreement like the (unused) one they had with the previous UK government. "As legally required, this is not El Salvador."

Interesting article. Let's read it.

The big picture: The Trump administration fought a lower court order to return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadorian national who the government erroneously deported, arguing the judge's order imposes on the president's foreign policy powers.

Okay. "Erroneously deported". Maybe this is liberal media slander. Let's see where the link goes.

A Salvadorian national living in Maryland legally was wrongly deported to El Salvador, the Department of Justice has admitted in court papers filed Monday.

They admitted it? Maybe this is spin from the ... biased reporters at ... Axios? Well, let's click.

It's a filing by the government, defending their position. From the "Statement of Facts"

Plaintiff Abrego Garcia is a citizen and native of El Salvador, and his coplaintiffs are his U.S. citizen wife and five-year-old child, who reside in Maryland. Compl. ¶¶ 4–6, 42. Both Abrego Garcia and his wife work full-time to support their family.

During a bond hearing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) stated that a confidential informant had advised that Abrego Garcia was an active member of the criminal gang MS-13.

Although Abrego Garcia was found removable, the immigration judge granted him withholding of removal to El Salvador in an order dated October 10, 2019.

On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error. Cerna Decl. ¶¶ 12–15. On March 16, a news article contained a photograph of individuals entering intake at CECOT.

Okay ... so he was protected from removal, and ICE should not have removed him and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.

And he was not merely "removed" to another country, but sent to a notorious prison for gang members, where it's unclear if he'll ever be able to leave. Due to an "administrative error". Without any due process to determine, for instance, whether he was actually a member of MS-13, whether this confidential informant's claims were true. When previously he was married to a US citizen and raising a five year old.

Let's read your second paragraph again:

Not to blackpill too much, but the country is basically doomed. When judges can override issues of national sovereignty - literally there is NOTHING more important than a country deciding for itself who to let in and who to expel - the illegal immigration issue in the US will never be solved. It's over, there's just no way to solve it. The millions who came in will never leave.

What?

How did this sequence of thoughts occur to you?

Most illegal immigrants are not protected from removal. For those that are protected, there are ways to remove the protection, whether that be via executive orders (as trump has revoked TPS for many groups of illegal immigrants), laws (Republicans, in theory, have a trifecta, and could nuke the filibuster at any time for something of such great importance) or proceedings in courts. Even then, if the administration simply wanted him gone, they could have expelled this person to freedom in a foreign country, instead of a prison that El Salvador advertises as a hellish place you can never leave, and perhaps gotten a friendlier ruling.

The Trump Administration is not getting similar orders to return the over 275 other people sent to CECOT, because they weren't sent because of an "administrative error" like this one.

How does an order demanding this man return have anything at all to do with the ability of the Trump administration to deport illegal immigrants in general?

I think you misread. He was subject to removal but not specifically to El Salvador. If they removed him to any other country it’d be fine.

I re-read my comment and I don't think I implied otherwise?

You stated:

“Okay ... so he was protected from removal, and ICE should not have removed him and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.”

He was not protected from removal. He was protected from going to El Salvador; not removal per se.

Ok I see, that was worded weirdly, and I should've clarified that, but this supports my main point that this ruling does nothing to prevent Trump from carrying out deportations in general

On the same page! The problem is the district court judge is now willfully misreading the SCOTUS opinion.

You and @curious_straight_ca may be talking past each other:

Okay ... so he was protected from removal [to El Salvador], and ICE should not have removed him [to El Salvador] and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.

Perhaps in your mind, the mistake is only where he was sent, not how the mistake occurred, but ICE never tried to send him anywhere other than El Salvador (so far as I know...) the remedy being ordered by the court isn't that he be sent "anyplace other than El Salvador" (the judge wants him back in the USA, presumably for the purposes of investigating ICE's compliance with relevant court orders; it'd be embarrassing to bring him back, due to having fucked up intra-branch - not even inter-branch - approval for deportation, just to re-deport him correctly, but that's on ICE for being sloppy...), so a miscommunication occurs, due to lack of specificity.

Okay ... so he was protected from removal, and ICE should not have removed him and admits so, but did so anyway due to an error.

And because people are often confused, one has to reiterate -- he was protected from removal by a ruling from an immigration judge that is part of the Executive Branch. The same branch that made an oopsie and removed him.

This isn't even two branches of government jostling over it -- for example if the 2019 order was from an Art III court (i.e. the judiciary). It's the league of morons in the same branch!

I think that the DOGE cuts are just a part of the reason why academics are avoiding the US.

Another aspect is that cutting edge science is often very international.

Say you want to organize a conference. You could organize a conference for US residents, but that might exclude two thirds of the researchers. Of the remaining third, half would probably prefer a more international venue. Or you could try to invite the international community, but these people read the news. They know that any foreigner is staying in the US with the grace of DJT, they also know that academic excellence is not a focus of his administration, and they all have heard horror stories of German tourists being detained for weeks by ICE. If you are a professor from Europe, would you not much rather go to a conference in the PRC instead? Even if they deny you entry to the country because of some tweet you made a few years ago, they will likely treat you much better than ICE until you are deported because for the CCP attracting international science is a priority.

Or say you want to find a new professor for some US university. The most qualified candidate does not have a US passport. He knows that any "permanent" residency can be easily revoked by the state department for any reason, and he is aware that green cards are being cancelled for political speech. Even if he is a MAGA-fan, he is aware that now that Trump has established this precedent, the next administration will have a much easier time expelling foreign professors they don't like in turn.

You could organize a conference for US residents, but that might exclude two thirds of the researchers.

I think it's worth noting that these conferences exist: for research close enough to ITAR and defense stuff, there really are "US persons only" academic conferences.

There is no international competition, those conferences will be restricted to locals for the exact same reason. The american military researcher can't just choose to go to a chinese conference instead

Imagine how easy it'd be to pick up a cute Chinese girlfriend at one of those. Just ask if she wants to come see your heat seeking missile.

that's funny, but they do not seek lifelong attachment here. What happens after she realizes you aren't in comitted relationship towards making heat seeking missiles?

What’s the Chinese for “Is that a heat-seeking missile in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?”

"Knock it off you two."

The media propaganda machine claims that the US will experience a "brain drain" - a term usually applied to third world countries - because of recent DOGE cuts: https://www.reuters.com/world/scientists-us-harried-by-trump-cuts-turn-towards-europe-2025-04-11/.

Of course, the DOGE cuts are necessary to reign in the huge deficit and just as importantly, to stop funding DEI programs and worthless research, like the "tuna" research cite din the article. Just like my taxpayer funds do not need to go to funding transgender surgeries in Honduras, they don't need to use my money to study tuna for "sustainability" reasons. Of course, the EU being EU, they want to hire some of these people for no other reason than to spite the US. There hasn't been any actual investigation into whether they need a tuna researcher; as long as they can dunk on the US and pat themselves on the back, they'll do that.

The DOGE cuts were purely performative. Anyone trying to cut the federal deficit without tackling the absurd ballooning elder care costs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid portions that go to elders) isn't serious. Science is an extremely tiny slice of the federal budget, but it happens to be one where the effects of cuts won't show up for a decent amount of time. This is in contrast to something like tariffs, where Trumpian buffoonishness is almost immediately apparent in a number of ways.

Jewish nuclear researchers that fled Nazi Germany helped produce the atomic bomb. I'm not saying the current crop of researchers are doing stuff that's that serious, but having scientists flee your broken sectarian country is generally a bad thing.

I wouldn't worry too much about a "brain drain." It's telling that their go-to example of "brain drain" is a European who came to America and is considering returning. Here's what he says:

Now Die Dejean is applying for positions in Europe.

"I want to work wherever they allow me to do the research," said the scientist, who studies fish stocks to ensure tuna is being fished sustainably.

"I'm eagerly waiting for some of the things that are coming from the European Union...increasing the opportunities for scientists like me to come back," said Die Dejean, who was born in Spain but has spent most of his career in the U.S. and Australia.

Sounds to me like there aren't many such positions in Europe, he's holding out hope they create them. I've heard IRL from scientists that it's pretty difficult to get jobs - many wind up writing apps as a result. Maybe that's a failure of society, if so, it's not one that can be placed at Trump's feet. (I say this as someone who doesn't like Trump.) It's not just tuna researchers either, see this video about astrophysicists, which is clearly a market where the supply of astrophysicists far exceeds the number of astrophysics jobs society is willing to fund:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=n8cEZM1lN5g

Interesting video, thanks for sharing.

I can list a number of more serious cases of brain drain, though they have nothing to do with DOGE. For example, Dr. Wu Yonghui, former Vice President of Google DeepMind, «has joined ByteDance as the head of foundational research for its large model team, Seed, according to Chinese media outlet, Jiemian.» That was around January. By now, they've created a model Seed-Thinking-v1.5 that's on par or better than DeepSeek R1 with 2x fewer activated parameters and 3.5x smaller, trained in a significantly more mature way, here's the tech report; they have the greatest stash of compute in Asia and will accelerate from now.

That's off the top of my head because I've just read the report. But from personal communication, a great ton of very strong Chinese are not coming anymore, and many are going back, due to the racism of this admin, general sense of meh that the American culture and way of life increasingly evoke, and simply because China can offer better deals now – in terms of cost of living, public safety, infrastructure, and obvious personal affinities. This isn't like the previous decade where only ancient academics retired to teach in Tsinghua or whatever, these are brilliant researchers in their prime, carrying your global leadership on their shoulders.

If I were American, that'd worry me a lot.

I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but someone with a PhD in physics- any physics subfield- almost certainly has economic opportunities for 'very strong math background person' which far exceed any salary that academia could conceivably offer. I suspect other hard science PhD types have a similar situation, even if it's something as boring as running quality control analysis on pharmaceuticals.

It seems like 'scientists doing commercial rather than research work' may not be entirely due to the lack of opportunities to do research.

This is such a fucking weird angle, I don't understand why progressives keep deploying it. No, they were explicitly what the people asked for - an end to stupid frivolous spending. Not an end to social security and Medicare. Nobody asked for that. They just wanted to stop the USG from spending American tax dollars to fund ridiculous frivolous bullshit like communist rap albums and teaching lesbian farmers about sustainability.

And considering your position on Trump, the idea of you wanting him to go after Medicare and social security is confusing. It's like you actually don't give a shit about the economy, you just want Trump to do more big things "where Trumpian buffoonishness is almost immediately apparent in a number of ways", because the only thing you care about is being outraged and outrage at trumpian buffoonishness often has a curious way of dying out with the start of a new media cycle.

Of course cutting Medicare would be a terrible idea, the point is that you can't cut the federal budget significantly by only going after things nobody cares about. The republicans have been doing this exercise of thinking up some ridiculous thing the government is tangentially "funding" (sex change surgeries for underwater feminist studies basket weavers in Burundi) for as long as I can remember. It's a silly talking point and everyone should see though it. But at least the Tea Party republicans didn't follow through by indiscriminately cutting everything. They had the decency to lie to their voters and maintain the status quo once they reached office.

No, they were explicitly what the people asked for - an end to stupid frivolous spending.

Not all the people. I proudly made the correct vote in 2024. I warned my coworkers and anyone who would listen that tariffs would be a disaster. It's not our fault that 51% of the people in certain states made a dumb choice.

I feel like you're not really disagreeing with me on the key argument. I'm sure there's thin slices of fat that could be cut across the USFG, but it's not going to be significant enough to meaningfully impact the deficit. So sure, cut the communist rap albums. Just don't pretend it's anything other than a performative victory.

And no, I want both parties to get serious about tackling the deficit. It'll likely require a compromise of both some tax increases and spending cuts, and by virtue of how the budget currently is, some of those cuts will almost certainly have to come from elder care. The best time to stop kicking that can was 30 years ago. The second best time to do so is right now.

If Trump attempted this, he'd probably screw it up in dozens of ways. But that's just Trump being Trump. Bears shit in the woods, and Trump is a buffoon.

Sorry it took me so long to reply, I started writing one last night but I was being lazy and writing it in the website and brave refreshed and I lost it.

And no, I want both parties to get serious about tackling the deficit. It'll likely require a compromise of both some tax increases and spending cuts, and by virtue of how the budget currently is, some of those cuts will almost certainly have to come from elder care. The best time to stop kicking that can was 30 years ago. The second best time to do so is right now.

You know it's not going to happen though no matter who is in charge though so why would you want him to try it if he's just going to fuck it up? I can tell you my reasoning - I don't know if tariffs would work, they seem crazy to me but so does printing infinite money and that's the only other option I ever see offered! To be fair, this isn't my wheelhouse, maybe in economist circles everyone knows a way to fix it that isn't either tariff negotiations or 'hum loudly enough that you are distracted from the topic', but in the msm I only hear about how crazy and destructive Trump is, and no alternatives except shit like 'do a vat instead' and other solutions that amount to maintain the status quo.

I assumed the doge cuts were meant to be performative, meant to be bread and circuses in preparation for hard times. Because we aren't fixing the economy without hard times. But now he's rolled back the tariffs, which given how Trump operates likely means an internal pillar of support collapsed. And yet even still, the amount of effort his opposition had to deploy to disable him is insane! So I return to the hill I always die on - I think Trump plays up his buffoonery so people underestimate him, but maybe he is just a dummy. Whatever he is, his opposition aren't any better, they are just better at hiding their fuck ups. Either way it looks like we aren't getting the economy fixed without a proper disaster.

Your comment is excessively fatalistic. Countries undo their bad decisions all the time. Massive peacetime deficits were not a normal occurrence in this country for the first couple hundred years of its existence. Whether the US will cut its current deficits is up to the electorate. I'm not particularly hopeful about the prospect given that the current electorate is full of populist idiots that would punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions vis-a-vis deficit reduction, but it's certainly theoretically achievable. Tariffs are not the way to get there, as the amount of money raised would be comparatively tiny relative to the damage done.

The US isn't printing "infinite money", as that would have resulted in hyperinflation (inflation of high single digits or low double digits doesn't count as hyperinflation).

Whether the US will cut its current deficits is up to the electorate. I'm not particularly hopeful about the prospect given that the current electorate is full of populist idiots that would punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions vis-a-vis deficit reduction, but it's certainly theoretically achievable.

Lmao yep I agree one hundred percent. Except for the populist modifier, that's just your nail. Unless 95% of the country are populists now. Or are you suggesting that the democrats (who think populists are evil) would cut ss Medicare or welfare were they in power?

You call me excessively fatalistic, but I think you are being naive. Trump is a symptom, not the cause of our leaders' incompetence. (After all if the universities could fix the economy, why didn't they when Biden was in charge?) I am actually not completely blackpilled by that realisation however, because there is a silver lining to learning that our elite human capital are just idiot narcissists - it means you can let go of the idea that there could be a society of people who don't punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions. Due to the confluence of unintended second order effects, perverse incentives and incompetence, our society is fucking atrocious at producing people who won't punish politicians for making the correct long term decisions, but it's even worse at producing politicians who will make the correct long term decisions.

Leftists have their own version of populism which is mostly focused on billionaire-bashing. The left hasn't been particularly interested in balancing the budget since Clinton, and he was basically forced to do that by a Republican Congress.

It’s a position of inconsistency. The biggest fish in the Waste/fraud/abuse category are in welfare and entitlements. In fact at least a two-thirds of our budget goes to mandatory entitlements, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, without getting into welfare payments. To talk about cutting the waste in government spending without touching those things is inconsistent. It’s like having a family budget, and saying you’ll make big changes to protect yourself from too much debt, and never getting around to asking if you’re spending too much on housing. No, that’s not serious. It’s not something as inessential as the makeup buying, but if you’re really needing to cut spending, it all has to be on the table.

I'm not happy about it, and agree it is unserious but the other unserious position in this fight is the idea that anyone actually thought Trump was going to cut Medicare, social security and welfare, regardless of how much waste him and Musk claimed they would take care of. And while I understand why people who support Trump or conservative goals would be annoyed, I can't imagine why anyone who thinks Trump is a buffoon would want him to go after Medicare and social security unless they wanted more outrage.

It’s a position of inconsistency.

"Hardcore fiscal conservatism deeply unserious" looks fairly consistent to me. Maybe they've just lost control of the party and nobody cares.

It’s like having a family budget, and saying you’ll make big changes to protect yourself from too much debt, and never getting around to asking if you’re spending too much on housing.

This is very common, though?

Hence all the back and forth about "you're accusing me of eating too much avocado toast, but I can't rent a tiny apartment for less than $3,000 a month." Or people with 30 year mortgages -- they aren't usually just going to sell their home and move to a cheap house in the rust belt.

In the case of home economies, the solution is often more earners -- move in with their SO, crowd more roommates in, AirBNB the casita. In the US economy, the main thing coming up is increased automation, and I'm a bit surprised that after hearing so much about US economic policy changes, and so much about AI driven economic changes looming, that there seems to be so little overlap in the conversations as of yet. Or perhaps I've just missed them?

I mean taking in another roommate, renting out an unused room, or the like are dealing with the cost of housing in that example. But I guess it’s a poor choice for the situation. My point is that about half or more of our federal budget goes towards entitlements enacted decades ago when our demographics were vastly different and we steadfastly refuse to adjust them for the reality we’re in now. Sure, in 1960, we could probably afford to have seniors retire at 65 and we had a glut of 20-30 something people entering their prime earning years. Especially since most people didn’t live much past 70. Now, we have retirees drawing out their SS, Medicare and so on for something like 20 years at a time when there are not nearly as many young people to prop up the system. Seniors comfort themselves that they’re only getting what the6 put in, but really if you live 20 years post retirement and get colas on top of your earned benefits, then you’re taking more than you ever put in. And we’ve refused to do anything substantial about it. The retirement age, if we were to keep it in line with what the age of retirement was in 1950 would be nearly 80.

Seniors comfort themselves that they’re only getting what the6 put in, but really if you live 20 years post retirement and get colas on top of your earned benefits, then you’re taking more than you ever put in.

Another way to put this (and more important, given that Medicare is a bigger problem than Social Security.) is that retiring people today mostly paid for 1970s-2000s healthcare and expect 2020s healthcare in return.

The point is it's a tiny share of the budget and much of it is not frivolous spending. If you want to reduce the deficit, these cuts are definitely not necessary, while cuts to social security Medicaid, and Medicare are unless you want massive tax increases.

They just wanted to stop the USG from spending American tax dollars to fund ridiculous frivolous bullshit like communist rap albums and teaching lesbian farmers about sustainability.

The claim was that they were gonna meaningfully cut the deficit (Elon originally gave a figure of 1 trillion at least).

If they merely wanted to cut a left wing patronage network to size they could have said that and aimed lower.

"I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that timeframe," Musk told the Fox News anchor Bret Baier during a panel interview with top members of the DOGE team.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-lowers-doges-estimated-savings-again-2025-4

"We've got a $2 trillion deficit," Musk said. "If we don't do something about this deficit, the country's going bankrupt….Interest payments alone on the national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking [because] we spend a lot of money on defense. And if that just keeps going, we're essentially gonna bankrupt the country….It's not optional for us to reduce the federal expenses; it's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country. And it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt." https://reason.com/2025/02/12/elon-musk-implausibly-claims-competence-and-caring-can-cut-the-federal-budget-deficit-in-half/

Some people may have also wanted to starve the beast but the point was sustainability.

If the argument is that people expected the government to do this by cutting mosquito nets to Africans and sinecures to left wing professors and not welfare then that is really just the oldest argument against populism: what you actually get if you try to come up with policies based solely on what's popular with people is incoherence and stupidity.

It's clearly a case of hopes and wishes against basic reality. Attacking waste is popular, attacking the deficit is popular in theory. It would be awesome if people teaching Afghans conceptual art were squirreling away hundreds of billions.

Optimistically, the academics leaving the USA are the ones most ideologically captured, such that their contributions to knowledge production is easily replaceable or even a net negative, as is the case for much of what is purportedly being cut by DOGE. Given how academia has been pushing for the model of uplifting people by putting them into these institutions versus the the model of putting people into these institutions based on their ability to contribute to knowledge production for a couple of generations now, it wouldn't surprise me if even a solid majority of academics could leave the USA and leave the USA's academia better off for it.

Pessimistically, there's enough damage to funding in even in the most productive portions of academia, such that plenty of the academics leaving the USA really do create a "brain drain." I'd guess that academics doing actual good knowledge production are most likely to have the resources and options to pick up their lives and move to another continent, after all.

It really speaks to the immense wealth and prosperity of the western world that academic institutions are able to support so many unproductive and anti-productive academics; is it worth it to get rid of many of those, even at the cost of some loss of the productive ones? Or do we accept those as the cost for maximizing the amount of actual productive academics? The shape of the data probably matters a lot for whatever conclusion one draws. If we're looking at a 10-90 proportion of productive-un/anti-productive academics, and we can cut 50% of the latter while cutting 1% of the former, that sounds like that'd be worth it, whereas if cutting 1% of the latter results in cutting 50% of the former, that probably isn't.

Which then takes us a step back to the fact that we no longer have any credible institutions to tell us what the data looks like. The past decade has seen mainstream journalism outlets constantly discrediting themselves, especially with respect to politics surrounding Trump and his allies, and non-mainstream ones don't have a great track record by my lights, either. So I guess we'll see.

In terms of scientific research of the sort that would make USA stronger relative to other countries, like rocketry or nuclear physics in the past, it seems to me that AI is the most relevant field, where I perceive USA as still being most attractive for AI researchers. At least in the private sector, where a lot of the developments seem to be taking place. The part about that that worries me the most is the actual hardware the AI runs on, which basically universally are produced elsewhere, which is a mostly separate issue from the brain drain.

Optimistically, the academics leaving the USA are the ones most ideologically captured, such that their contributions to knowledge production is easily replaceable or even a net negative, as is the case for much of what is purportedly being cut by DOGE.

How fast from "there is no such thing as a limited freedom of speech" to "just fire them"...

I'm not sure how your comment is even tangentially related to what I wrote, including the part you quoted. I'd rather not speculate, so could you explain specifically what the relation is?

A few years months ago, before Elon Musk bought twitter, there was a very popular opinion here on the motte, and probably also among conservatives, that freedom of speech should not be limited in any way, whether directly by the government, or by powerful actors like social medias. When big tech fired people due to their right wing political opinions, conservatives were defending them while liberals were saying things like "they are bigots, they must be improductive anyway".

I don't know what happened, but it seems that a lot of people who had a very broad definition of free speech switched to a very precise and restricted one.

I don't know what happened, but it seems that a lot of people who had a very broad definition of free speech switched to a very precise and restricted one.

Name three.

What does that have to do with what I wrote, particularly the part you quoted, i.e.

Optimistically, the academics leaving the USA are the ones most ideologically captured, such that their contributions to knowledge production is easily replaceable or even a net negative, as is the case for much of what is purportedly being cut by DOGE.

There's nothing in that quote that has anything to say in any way about firing anyone on the basis of their political opinions. Neither does my comment have anything relating to firing people on the basis of their political opinions.

I also think your characterization as "freedom of speech should not be limited in any way" is simply wrong. That's free speech absolutism, which is very rare anywhere, certainly on the Motte, versus free speech maximalism, which is uncommon but not too much so.

Neither does my comment have anything relating to firing people on the basis of their political opinions.

Given that the first comment has been removed, I might have misread yours, but it seems to me you were arguing in favor of incentivizing people to leave the country according to their opinions.

I see, I guess it was just a misread, as I'm not sure how my comment could be interpreted that way.

I don't know what happened

I don't think you established that anything happened. I don't see anyone calling to fire the progressive equivalents of Brandon Eich, James Damore, or Peter Boghosian.

Do those even exist?

Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech. The principle of free speech is that the government cannot prevent you from speaking. It does not mean the government is obligated to protect your job in the event your boss doesn’t like what you’re saying or to keep you on staff in a university.

It also doesn’t mean that you can protest in any way you like. You are free to March around with signs. You are not free to block access to buildings, harass people, deface property, or block traffic.

Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech. The principle of free speech is that the government cannot prevent you from speaking.

That's why conservatives have no problem with private bodies (e.g. social media) censoring right wing opinions I suppose.

I have no problem with that as long as the rules are spelled out in advance. This forum is moderated and I’ve yet to see anyone complain that much because the rules are fair, consistent and promote good conversation. It’s just simply the cost of being around other people. I don’t object to fine restaurants excluding people who come in shorts because they provide the kind of environment I want.

I do object when social media claims to be open to all people yet are clearly skewing enforcement to favor one group over another. If you’re doing that, then you can’t claim to be a neutral gathering place. But if you’re openly saying “hey come to bluesky we’re Twitter, but liberal. “ if I don’t want that I simply don’t go there, much like if I don’t like wearing dress I don’t go to fancy restaurants. I’d object if a fast food place suddenly decided that im not allowed because I’m not wearing a dress.

That's why conservatives have no problem with private bodies (e.g. social media) censoring right wing opinions I suppose.

Have you forgotten that they were doing much of this censorship at government behest?

Yes, but what made it bad is not that the government was involved. What made it bad was that the content of what was pushed was bad, and what was good was blocked.

Free speech just isn’t coherent outside a reasonably monocultural environment. Nobody is actually going to fund or tolerate people who despise them and wish to destroy them.

Yes, but what made it bad is not that the government was involved. What made it bad was that the content of what was pushed was bad, and what was good was blocked.

What made it worst, in the American free speech tradition, is that the government was involved. Since every censor will tell you they're blocking what's bad and allowing what's good, and the fact that they ARE the censor means they have the power to make that claim, your version boils down to might makes right.

Yes. That is why I no longer advocate for free speech.

Firstly, the ‘only government shouldn’t censor’ line seems totally arbitrary to me - it’s okay if Twitter censors and whips up hostile mobs, but then it becomes unacceptable if they talked to an FBI agent before doing so. And once you move to a more expansive definition the whole thing just falls apart. If I don’t like what you say, can I avoid buying services from you? Can I suggest the same to my friend? Can I tell people I don’t hang out with people who say X and they shouldn’t either? If yes, you have social pressure and AstroTurfed boycotts, which doesn’t sound much like free speech to me. If no, then my free speech is being threatened.

Secondly, it feels quokka-like to the point of being suicidal. Why on Earth would I give free speech to people who are openly organising to deny me of it? To destroy my culture and to harm me personally?

Ultimately might DOES make right (as the British-supporting Americans who were forced to flee from Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness learned). I would rather pursue might than argue about rights with people who have no interest in my wellbeing.

Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech.

As Crowstep pointed out, it has everything to do with free speech. Freedom of speech is not the same thing as the legal protection afforded by the first amendment.

Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech

This is a particularly American understanding of free speech, in that the US constitution prohibits the government from restricting speech.

But it isn't the be all and end all of the principle of free speech. When JS Mill was writing about free speech, he starts be assuming no government coercion whatsoever, instead talking about public opinion.

Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice. But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

It seems pretty obvious to me that 'you can have any political opinions you want, except these ones. If you have these opinions you will get fired' is not meaningful freedom of speech, if applied more generally.

This is a particularly American understanding of free speech, in that the US constitution prohibits the government from restricting speech.

I wouldn't call it "American" as such. Lots of Americans properly understand the difference between freedom of speech and the first amendment to our constitution. It's an ignorant understanding, not an American one imo.

Getting fired has nothing to do with free speech. The principle of free speech is that the government cannot prevent you from speaking.

Nah, this is exactly what progressives were saying as they were getting people fired. I don't think the principle of free speech is by definition limited to the government.

The progressives were saying a lot of things about free speech, but only MOST of it was wrong. Somewhere in the motte, there's the idea that if a firm or government hires a person as their spokesperson, they can fire that person for saying the wrong thing as said spokesperson. Way out in the bailey is the idea that if someone says (or indeed has ever said) the wrong thing off the job when working for a private employer, the government can require (on pain of lawsuit for "hostile environment" discrimination) that person be fired for it. The progressives claim all that and everything in between.

About one government.

Public servants are not free. They accept certain restrictions to their freedoms as part of their job. Including a duty of neutrality.

You don't see military men blab about their freedom of movement do you?

There's certainly different views on public service from some insulated neutral administration to politically loyal yes men who get purged every administration.

But as soon as the nominally neutral public servants started having an identifiable political agenda, they were doomed. That is not a defensible position. And certainly not one defensible through free speech.

Indeed the principle forbids compelled speech, and one is compelled to fund the government. The government having a political agenda that isn't determined by constitutionally appointed political processes is unacceptable and bordering on traitorous.

They're free to wage political campaigns on their own dime, in they free time even, not the taxpayer's.

I think I agree, it's just that it is not at all how those purges do happen. The people they are firing are working for legally funded agencies or programs, and they are targeted under the assumption that people working in those agencies or programs are mostly political adversaries

The law is not a substitute for politics.

You can't hide behind a piece of paper forever.

A law is not just a piece of paper, and I don't think you can call "bordering on traitorous" something mandated by law (and not just allowed).

The government having a political agenda that isn't determined by constitutionally appointed political processes

I don't know what it means, given that the government always has a political agenda that isn't determined by any legally defined process. The people in charge are appointed by those processes, what they do with the power they get is up to them as long as they obey the Constitution

I happen to believe that constitutions are not paper but are written in the hearts of men, such that any subversion of their meaning or disbelief in them is more consequential than any formalism.

Betraying the spirit of how people see their nation function is what matters. Not what law is being broken strictly speaking. The Romans were right to see judicial and legislative proceedings as a religious process.

Hence how "He who saves his country breaks no law."

It did not end well for the roman law though

More comments

Can you give me a few links to the "there is no such thing as a limited freedom of speech" arguing that the government must fund their full time jobs where they get to promote their ideas for a living?

Obviously not in the government, but in private companies those fired for their right wing opinions had some level of support from conservatives a few years ago.

People can do whatever they want on their own dime. Not when you're compelled at gunpoint to pay them to do it.

Well, when we talk about academics losing their jobs be via DOGE cuts, that sounds more like getting rid of ideologically motivated programs, not firing someone for expressing their opinion.

In my experience, there are a substantial number of ideologically captured researchers working in hard science fields where it doesn't affect their output very much, but who would consider moving to Europe if they felt the government was sufficiently hostile to their politics. Losing these people would result in serious brain drain, even if it would probably make the social sciences more productive.

Losing these people would result in serious brain drain

Perhaps, but the Europeans have demonstrated a complete inability to make use of them either; it's a question of "they work in the US and the work gets done", or "they go home and receive half pay for doing nothing".

I mean, perhaps some people are concerned about brain drain solely from the perspective of a zero-sum competition with other countries, but I think that letting these people's talent go to waste is a loss for humanity as a whole.

Well, then their receiving countries can reorient themselves to take advantage of their returning human capital.

If they don’t, perhaps because those politics (that their researchers are more aligned with) inherently won’t let them, who am I to tell them that the perpetuation of those politics is a net-negative for humanity because it means objective progress is sacrificed? Clearly they believe those politics more important, and far be it from me to interrupt their mistakes, or even categorize them as such.

but the Europeans have demonstrated a complete inability to make use of them either;

Could you be more specific? There is a lot of cutting edge research going on in Europe. You can't get these chemistry/physics/medicine Nobel prizes without doing seriously successful research. USA has an edge but Europe is strong, too.

There is a lot of cutting edge research going on in Europe

Name a cutting edge Euro tech company.

Novo Nordisk? Ledger?

Broadening this to engineering, 9/10 Formula One teams (and the 10th has operations in the UK - so will an 11th team that plans to join), plus a lot of other top international motorsports engineering (Toyota's "in house" motorsports division is actually European and that planned 11th F1 team has a contract to use "Toyota's" Cologne wind tunnel, though this excludes at least some engines supplied to teams in national championships). Also, a lot of aerospace (BAE, Arianespace, Airbus, etc). I don't care enough to check where the various components were built, but you might want to look up the development of the astronomical observatories in Atacama.

ARM

Deepmind.

ASML.

You are doing a classical motte and bailey tactic. The context given by @ResoluteRaven was about "researchers working in hard science fields" and you are withdrawing to tech companies.

Big Tech is just a subset (and it is questionable even to label Google, Meta, or Netflix as tech companies, they are advertising and media companies with some tech undertones) of the field and not a place, where even a significant part of research is going on.

Europe leads in pharmaceutical research and is, for example, a place, where the longest sustainable fusion reaction was achieved. It's a place, where "researchers working in hard science fields" can certainly find a place to flourish. Will they? Who knows but it's not a research desert.

Why is the assumption that these DOGE cuts are intelligent? From what I’ve seen the better argument is that it’s a shoot-first-and-let-God-sort-them-out blitz on the bureaucracy?

Clinton, and before him Reagan, both cut back parts of the bureaucracy, but worked with experienced administrators who better knew what they were looking for and via a more considered process. Musk is employing 20-something sperges who can run SQL queries, if I’m not missing much more?

My favorite two examples of the latter are canceling government contracts because the payees were Politico and a Thomson Reuters, thinking the federal government was subsidizing journalism that wasn’t sufficiently MAGA.

Rather, Politico owns and operates Politico Pro, and Thomson Reuters does the same for Westlaw. Politico Pro is used to track the progress of legislation. Even Republicans commonly use it. Depending on your subscription, the $7,000 or $11,000 annual fee is going to do the job much better and cheaper than a staffer hired at minimum wage ever could.

And asking regulators and government lawyers to do without Westlaw access is even more stupid. Any lawyers they would be facing as counter-parties will be using it.

tuna

is delicious and worth protecting. Overfishing's been a huge problem since the Soviets started depleting fisheries in the 60s. Trawlers etc. are painful today. We definitely need research on how to protect our delicious tuna (or e.g. how to farm them cheaply and indefinitely).

You'd think the overfishing is something Conservatives could absolutely be brought on board with. I know a fair few in favour of protecting our environment (but not climate change initiatives, since they think those are all just an excuse for socialist economic transition), and given that China is one of the biggest overfishers, especially in other nations' waters... feels like a failure of messaging more than anything else.

Too much bad blood at this point. In the Pacific Northwest they destroyed our fishing industry while exempting "natives" from all the regs. In the northeast there's a similar story with cod and foreign fishing.

Same with logging and the spotted owls.

As if the natives prefer to live in teepees and hunt bison rather than living in houses with flush toilets and eating microwaved lean pockets like the rest of us.

Nah, the natives get to "partner" with some fishing megacorp the same way they do with casino management companies. Then they yoink e.g. all the Dungeness crabs, including the females and immature ones that the coast guard would board us with a swat team for taking.

hahaha! I'm so naive

Same thing has happened on Canadas east coast. It led to some minor uprisings along the white fishermen.

don't need to use my money to study tuna for "sustainability" reasons

Fisheries is a massive industry. We're seeing widespread collapse of wild populations for crabs and migratory freshwater fish.

Agriculture, fisheries & husbandry are always subsidized by govts. Govts move research burdens away from the farmers, by making public universities do the heavy lifting instead. These jobs were not created as a result of DEI. The 'tuna research' guy was in his job since the mid-1990s. It's indirect social-welfare.

US will experience a "brain drain"

The US is defined by brain-gain like no other nation before it. It has selected for 2 things : Intelligence (high skill immigration) and agency (the kind of person who will seek gold an ocean away). Brain-gain is practically American industrial policy. Cooling down would still imply brain-drain on the balance.

What gets me about you and your infinite cycle of creating new accounts and then deleting them, new posts and then deleting them is that you never really seem to explain why. You can just be a normal poster here. It’s OK. You’ve posted about a lot of interesting things, you’d fit in. It’s a mostly civilized political discussion forum for nerds. There’s no real malice. Just stop with the dumb routine.

The media propaganda machine claims that the US will experience a "brain drain" - a term usually applied to third world countries - because of recent DOGE cuts: https://www.reuters.com/world/scientists-us-harried-by-trump-cuts-turn-towards-europe-2025-04-11/. Of course, the DOGE cuts are necessary to reign in the huge deficit and just as importantly, to stop funding DEI programs and worthless research, like the "tuna" research cite din the article. Just like my taxpayer funds do not need to go to funding transgender surgeries in Honduras, they don't need to use my money to study tuna for "sustainability" reasons. Of course, the EU being EU, they want to hire some of these people for no other reason than to spite the US. There hasn't been any actual investigation into whether they need a tuna researcher; as long as they can dunk on the US and pat themselves on the back, they'll do that.

For anyone who wants to know what OP wrote before he deleted his post. Certain 4chan-isms about the nature of OP readily spring to mind.

Way to call it. And then it happened anyway. What an obnoxious thing to do. I don't understand. I think humans should have less variability in behavior.

He actually responded with "what are you talking about" to 2rafa, before deleting everything...

"The Jews know. Shut it down."

It's getting annoying enough that I say there should be a rule that deleting a top-level post is grounds for a permanent ban, but that's probably not a strong enough deterrent.

Rather, the ability to delete a post should not be given to new accounts. I'm not sure if that's possible to do, admin-wise, but it should be considered.

It's also possible that this behavior, while annoying, can't be stopped at any positive ROI. We're talking about a policy of the mods restoring posts people have consciously deleted. I think the safety valve of post deletion makes people feel safer being bolder and so enlivens discussion. If breaking deletion is what it takes to stop this guy, then maybe stopping this guy isn't worth it.

Even if new users couldn’t delete posts until they’d been users for 100 days or whatever, this guy would just edit them to say ‘deleted’ and then delete his account, so that isn’t a big deterrent.

The only thing I can think of is mods (who are presumably able to see deleted posts) manually restoring deleted comments created within 50 posts of a user joining the community to protect against bad actors. Idk if that’s viable.

This is supposed to be discussion forum of lasting value, not fleeting disposable shitpost zone.

Just reserve the power of deleting posts to moderators only. If you posted by mistake something that revealed classified info, broke some anti-terrorist law or compromised your OPSEC, the delete button will blank it temporarily and notify the moderators, and they will decide whether to keep it or not.

I think that's asking too much of the codebase and zorba's ability to tweak it

What about:

The account gets locked and the deleted messages are restored at the discretion of the mods.

This would get rid of the annoyance for the readers. I don't know if it is technically feasible though.

In general, if people want to distance themselves from their previous messages in earnest, that is what strikethrough is for. If I also think that a post of mine is rage bait, I might additionally add spoiler tags in to get less future engagement with it.

Delete should be reserved for posts without substance, or posts which have not gathered any replies for a while.

Even if it were banned, I'd still prefer the deletion to editing it to the point of indecipherability.

I don't think it even needs a new rule, clearly violates:

  • Keep to a single account.
  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

as well as meta rule

  • Don't be egregiously obnoxious

Maybe top level comments requiring some account age/karma for posting would help though.

I assume the mods would have already banned the person if there was an easy way. Did @2rafa recognize the style, or is top-level post deleter using a consistent block of IPs or set of IPs known to be used by a single VPN provider? I suppose someone could make some sort of bot that auto-replies with the original post in the case OP deletes the post in bad faith. Maybe selectively browser fingerprinting new accounts from suspect IPs?

Did @2rafa recognize the style, or is top-level post deleter using a consistent block of IPs or set of IPs known to be used by a single VPN provider?

I’m not a mod so don’t have access to that information, but I noticed the style and that he posted two top level responses in a row which is very rare for regulars outside of election-day or other major happening threads.


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